That is a shockingly low number, one that put the fear of God in
every other newspaper considering a paywall.

But don't worry: it's part of Newsday's plan.

Cablevision President of Local Media, Tad Smith, wrote in a memo
to staff that the paywall plan is part of the bundled package
with the TV subscription service.

So the number of people willing to actually pull out their wallet
and pay for their news doesn't matter, he says.

The New York paper's web strategy is to "provide Newsday's print
subscribers with a rich web experience that goes far beyond what
they can get in the newspaper alone," attracting subscribers to
both the Newsday site and to Cablevision.

Smith explains:

The way to measure success for newsday.com is not, therefore, to
count how many people sign up to pay $260 per year for access to
the website. Our objective instead is to grow our target
audience's utilization of newsday.com's great content and tools.
How does this create value? Those who value the website's
benefits are more likely to be retained as Cablevision or Newsday
subscribers, and the enhanced retention improves the economics of
our business. This is quite similar to the value that is created
by a targeted local cable network offered on your cable service.

As such, the newsday.com strategy is entirely different from the
strategies pursued by other current and prospective online
publishers. Other online publishers do not sell high-speed
Internet services. They must sell their services to customers one
by one. In short, newsday.com is unique in the advantages it
brings Cablevision and vice versa and we like it that way.

This seems like a good plan on the surface, but we're skeptical
to see if it's a paywall that will bring in big bucks.